It’s a perfect New Mexico morning, and I’m planting radishes.

6:30 a.m., no wind, the birds building a nest over the back porch talking to each other behind my back. I’m planting my second row, because you know, the first set is just peeking out, their tiny green tops showing up, making my day.

I’m a farmer’s daughter. Getting my gardening gloves on and heading out to my raised beds excites me.

We don’t need the produce. I can go to Santa Fe Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning and get everything I need, fresh from the field. I’ll probably give 80% of what I grow away. In August when the zucchini squash is taking over the world, I’ll have a party just so I can hand out my crazy abundance of zukes and cherry tomatoes.

Every time I’m in the garden, admiring whatever’s decided to grow and thrive, I think of being seven years old on the farm in Logan. The luxury of summertime, the waking up when I wanted in the bedroom I shared with my sister Belinda. She was sixteen that summer, waitressing the breakfast shift at the Yucca Cafe, so I woke alone. The house was quiet, my dad and brothers already out on the tractor.

I’d pull on my polyester shorts and peasant blouse hand sewn by Mom, and head out the back door, screen door slamming behind. It would still be cool, the grass wet with the dew that showed up every night, even in eastern New Mexico.

Mom would be out there behind the washhouse and the swingset, bent over the bush beans, green Tupperware colander in her hand, sun hat on. She’s be gathering whatever would show up on the table that night – black eyed peas, yellow squash, a tomato or two. She’d look up and smile and call, “Come and help me.”

That’s what I see in my mind when I’m planting radishes, those clear mornings before I had breakfast and took off on my yellow banana seat bike for a day of exploring. Sunshine, food, freedom, home, and especially Mom, smiling at me in the early morning.

I’m reading a lot of Frederick Buechner these days. He talks about a Room Called Remember, a place he goes where there’s comfort and happiness and light and love.

That’s where I go when I’m in the garden. I not only remember Mom in her sunhat, I remember Granny Terry in her backyard, bent over the baby tomato plants safe in their Folger coffee can sleeves. I remember my first father-in-law, the wonderfully soft-spoken Curtis Murphree, pulling up in the pickup and putting down the tailgate while we were mowing the lawn. “Come have a bite of watermelon,” he’d say, taking out his pocket knife and cutting a plug out of a melon still warm from the Murphree family garden, three huge acres of irrigated amazingness.

I remember my Uncle Herman and his rows of produce growing across the road from their house. We’d drive the eighteen miles to their house just to gather green beans.

I go to my Room Called Remember when I’m in the garden. But I also go to a place of possibilities. The day is promising, the week is stretching out before me with the hope of a thunderstorm tomorrow afternoon and a dinner party with friends and family on Sunday. In just a few weeks, there will be radishes to share, along with a few green onions.

My grandsons will come to visit just in time to gather a few carrots. We’ll wash them off with a hose, just like Mom and I did on those summer mornings. We’ll give Baby Milo one to gnaw on while we sit in the grass and consider whether we’re going for a walk on the Rail Trail or down to the Children’s Museum.

Today I’m grateful for my garden, for the baby radishes poking their leaves up through the dirt, for memories and for possibilities. Where does your Room Called Remember live?

Thanks for checking in.